Chinese fans were shocked and saddened by the sudden death of pop queen Whitney Houston as grieve pour over the internet.
“The world lost one singer who sang from her soul,” said a radio host of the China National Radio while playing her hit song “I will always love you” Sunday night.
“Her song ‘When you believe’ gave me strength and helped me through the tough times of my life, so I want to thank her with all my heart. I believe the best way to commemorate her would be listening to her songs one more time,” a fan wrote online.
The singer’s death made headlines across major websites in China. As of 10 p.m. Sunday, more than 700,000 micro-blogs were posted on Weibo.com, the leading twitter-like site in China. The site has a special webpage dedicated to the late pop queen.
“I am in blue all day, listening to her song ‘I look to you’ over and over again. Life is so fragile,” a microblogger named “Linxiaoyu” wrote on Weibo.com.
“Janmy-IMF” wrote “Whitney Houston, the voice of eternity. Maybe God needs a female singer to sing a duet with Michael Jackson,” Xinhua reported.
Houston was found dead Saturday in the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.
The pop queen enjoyed a massive fan base in China. Actually she was invited to perform in China as early as 1999 and eventually held a concert in Shanghai in July 2004.
The 48-year-old Grammy-winner was a huge star in the 1980s and 90s, selling over 170 million albums worldwide. She was also a model in her teens and an actress staring in the movie “The Bodyguard” in 1992.
Her career later took a turn for the worse amid her battle against drug abuse and a stormy marriage to singer Bobby Brown.